The president can only be removed by a two-thirds majority of both the National Assembly (photo)and Senate Dozens of French opposition MPs have launched an attempt to impeach President Francois Hollande.

The conservative deputies allege that the Socialist president disclosed classified information to journalists, published in a book recently. The MPs have sent the motion to the government.

Pierre Lellouche, who began the process, said Mr Hollande had "seriously violated defence secrecy".

However, the impeachment attempt faces a number of difficult hurdles.

The motion was signed by 79 deputies from the Republicans party. But 152 support the measure, the party told the AFP news agency.

Article 68 of the French constitution - which Mr Lellouche and his supporters are attempting to trigger - says that the president may not be removed from office except for "a breach of his duties patently incompatible with his continuing in office".

Impeachment can only be achieved by a two-thirds majority of both the Assembly and Senate by secret ballot, in a special sitting where parliament acts as the high court.

Mr Hollande's Socialist Party controls 51% of the National Assembly seats, and 37% of the Senate.

The proposal must also be approved by France's committee on laws before it reaches parliament.

'Political suicide'

The controversial book at the centre of the accusations, A President Should Not Say That, is a record of dozens of private conversations with two journalists, collected over several years.

It included Mr Hollande's comments on Syrian air strikes, and the admission that he personally ordered the assassination of four enemies of the state, among several other controversial statements.

The publication of the book was widely seen as "political suicide" ahead of France's 2017 presidential election, and saw Mr Hollande's approval rating sink to a new low.

In a poll, 78% of those surveyed said it was a mistake for Mr Hollande to give the interviews, and 86% said they did not want him to run for a second term.

The controversy comes at a crucial time for Mr Hollande, ahead of April's presidential campaign.

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, defeated by Mr Hollande in 2012, has announced his intention to run for the presidency again.

In order to do so, he must win a Republicans primary election this month. Many expect former Prime Minister Alain Juppe to get the nomination instead.

Mr Hollande has not yet announced whether he will run for re-election.

Latest update : 2016-11-11Dozens of French opposition lawmakers late on Thursday formally requested an impeachmeant of President François Hollande over his disclosure of classified information to journalists for a tell-all book.

The head of France’s National Assembly confirmed that he had transferred a copy of the impeachment request signed by 79 opposition MPs to the executive branch.

The request, which in part of the French constitution’s Article 68, faces several political and legal obstacles. Furthermore, it's a long shot and does not appear to have been taken seriously by the president or the Socialist party.

Article 68 states that “the President of the Republic shall not be removed from office during the term thereof on any grounds other than a breach of his duties patently incompatible with his continuing in office. Such removal from office shall be proclaimed by Parliament sitting as the High Court”.

The impeachment motion was launched by Pierre Lellouche, a member of the right-wing party Les Républicains (LR), after the publication of a book, “A President Shouldn't Say That”, in which Hollande openly discussed state secrets such as details of plans for an air strike on Syria in 2013, or paying ransom for abducted French journalists.

“[The impeachment procedure] expresses our deep conviction that a president must not and cannot have the right to say just anything regarding his role as head of state and head of the military”, said a communiqué from the LR party.

The Socialist president granted a staggering 61 private interviews with Le Monde journalists Gérard Davet and Fabrice Lhommehim over the course of four years for the now infamous book, and even waved any rights to review or edit the book.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — A draft resolution to the High Court, calling for the impeachment of French President Francois Hollande over accusations that he breached security in disclosing classified information to journalists, may be blocked by the Socialist Party lawmakers before it reaches the parliament, member of the French National Assembly Nicolas Dhuicq told Sputnik.

"Socialists are going to find a way to block this draft resolution before it reaches the parliament’s voting," Dhuicq said. According to the National Assembly member, who signed the motion, the draft resolution, initiated by French Republican parliamentarian Pierre Lellouche, included over 70 signatories from The Republicans' party members, with at least 150 Republicans supporting this step against the Socialist Party president.

As far-right leader Marine Le Pen gains ground in France, President Hollande, the least popular president in the country since the 1940s, has announced he will not be seeking re-election in 2017. He said he wanted to give the ruling Socialist party the opportunity to win “against conservatism and extremism,” and is the first sitting President since the Second World War not to run for re-election.

What an immense disappointment Merkel is. Intelligent and well educated with an appealing, fairly benign face, but, wait, am I describing Merkel or, in fact, Obama? It turns out not to matter. They are a pair of malignant soul mates born thousands of miles apart who conspired later in life to bring the world a great deal of unhappiness.

Merkel has been de facto leader of Europe during an extremely challenging period, one demanding real statesmanship. Instead, she has provided attitudes and short-term fixes married to complete acceptance of the most destructive American policies possible. Her policies have alienated large numbers of her own people and, almost more importantly, contributed mightily to the weakening of loyalties in Europe – not a record of which to be proud.

Unfortunately, during the period of her Chancellorship, there have been no other European leaders of stature and ability to balance or oppose her. Absolutely none. Britain had the flabby joke of David Cameron who collapsed his own house of cards through sheer political incompetence. France had the absurd Francois Hollande, an impossibly pompous man with not a single achievement to his credit, a parody of a French President, certainly the worst leader in modern French history.

So, Europe at a time when America put great new stresses and demands upon it for its own selfish reasons had no leadership worth mentioning. All the major figures were content with accommodating America’s harsh and destructive initiatives. Well, I do think there is something to be said for the dictum that history is biography.

Everyone involved has suffered for Merkel’s attitudes and whims. Europe simply could not have done much worse. The press so glibly speaks of the rise of the political Right in Europe and in America, but what we really see on both continents is public reaction to years of blundering policies causing vast misery in many places.

You cannot support America’s destruction of the Middle East without accepting its direct consequences both in massive migrations of terrified people and in the rise of terror by relatively powerless young men wanting revenge for what has been done to them, their families and homes. Yet this is precisely what Angela Merkel has tried to do, trying to avoid inevitable, destructive consequences of stupid acts she has supported. Having never raised her voice against what America was doing, Merkel decided to deal with some of the consequences by playing the grandmotherly figure who welcomes an avalanche of refugees, seemingly not appreciating for a second what that means on the streets of her own country.

No decent person is against organized, peaceful immigration or against giving assistance to desperate refugees. There is an ethical obligation for both as well as some sound economic reasons. But ,,,

Merkel, realizing what her support of America’s destruction in Libya, Syria, and other places has wrought, tried setting the example of a benign figure ready to help everyone, a kind of bonhomie approach to what was a totally-avoidable catastrophe. The impossibility of this should have been seen, but it was not. Too many extremely-different refugees – different in language, customs, religion, wealth, and politics – cannot be absorbed quickly or peacefully by any country, and perhaps that is even more true of relatively old and homogeneous societies such as Germany.

We like to speak of xenophobia with contempt, but in the gritty real lives of vast populations everywhere on the planet, it is a reality just as much as backward religious practices, which cannot be wished away. True xenophobia, indeed, much resembles fundamentalist religion in that it is an expression of superstitious instincts, deeply-rooted instincts whose origins go beyond mere learned behaviors. Just try asking highly religious people to set aside their feelings for completely different newcomers, the example coming to mind of the Ultra-Orthodox in Israel and their “take” on others. It is possible only in the imagination.

But xenophobia is only part of the mix, despite the claims of a superficial mainstream press, and I am not just speaking of it. We promote nationalism and national unity in every Western country with flags, anthems, pledges, holiday customs, uniforms, speeches, parades, even laws, and then some leaders seem to expect their people, almost on command, to turn their backs on all the lifelong indoctrination and embrace sudden, great change? It simply cannot be done.

As with anything else you may care to discuss, the time to act is before a great problem or crisis has been created. Preventative health care is no less valuable for nations than it is for individuals. The leaders of Europe should have seen what America’s fanatical crusade was going to do and opposed it, forcefully, before it was started. In doing so, Europe would have been strengthened instead of diminished as it has been., to say nothing of preventing the death and maiming of millions in the Middle East. Instead they quietly supported it and even donated resources to the insane efforts of America’s Grande Armée in the Middle East.

Merkel’s contribution to disaster goes further,,,

Germany’s taking a million refugees is roughly equivalent to America’s taking four million. It does not take a great imagination to see what the results of such a massive, short-term influx would be. Moreover, never mind Donald Trump, there has been no American government, ever, willing to accept such numbers at one time. Indeed, had America’s recent governments demonstrated the slightest sense of responsibility for what they had caused, they would have taken extraordinary steps for the refugees, but they did not. Instead, they encouraged measures like Merkel’s response, which, in terms of total numbers involved in the human catastrophe, is necessarily pathetic.

But, if you read enough history, you will know it has always been part of the American government’s character to do what as it pleases in the world with little or no regard for the consequences, so long as those consequences are on foreign shores. It is an attitude bred in a people who too often feel they can have it all and have it now and a people who have the illusion, generated both in commercial advertising and in fundamentalist Christianity, of endless youth with all its happy irresponsibility. It is something which actually marks America as especially unsuitable for enlightened world leadership, while it is the very quality demonic figures such as Kissinger or Brzezinski regarded as useful to their twisted international purposes.

Merkel quickly learned what she had done was a terrible political mistake. Consequences were quick, so she backtracked, never a dignified behavior for a national leader. But more than that, Merkel, realizing what the consequences might be of a few million more refugees temporarily encamped in Turkey continuing on into Europe, was quick to strike a deal with another of our planet’s most unscrupulous and dangerous leaders, the madman who rules Turkey, Erdogan. She agreed to pay him several billion Euros to keep the refugees in their massive Turkish camps.

This was not just a highly unethical deal, it should have been seen for the ongoing danger it represented, especially in view of Europe’s general relations with Erdogan and its confused efforts to deal with his many demands, ranging from visa-free travel in Europe for Turks to full membership in the EU. Again, American policy had created a huge problem by treating Turkey, an undemocratic country with limited respect for human rights and one for some years ruled by a madman, as an indispensable ally against Russia, so the EU to this day feels it must accommodate that ugly reality in all its policies.

Obviously, a country in the state we see in Turkey – constant war and terror against the Kurds, serious government suppression of free speech and activities, assassinations, widespread Muslim fundamentalism, and now new waves of repression following a failed coup – is in no shape to qualify for EU membership under the EU’s own requirements, which at least struggle to be faithful to Enlightenment principles.

Erdogan, never one to be shy about what he wants, has already threatened publicly to “open the gates” if the EU does not proceed in treating his demands appropriately. So, Merkel’s dirty deal with the devil is seriously threatened and becomes just one more source of uncertainty and instability. It is not a promising situation.

I believe Merkel was permanently scarred by growing up in East Germany and likely harbors both inordinate fear of Russia and slavish admiration for America, neither attitude being warranted in the least today. Her mental landscape possibly includes images of Andropov versus Jimmy Stewart, but policy built on fantasy and fears is bad policy, always.

The Bush-Obama years have been, in so far as foreign policy goes, about as stupidly and blunderingly destructive as Lyndon Johnson’s bull-headed insistence on fighting a major war in Vietnam. Johnson ended by killing about 3 million people, generating instability and misery, dividing America itself, and achieving nothing worth achieving. Bush-Obama have killed at least a couple of million, generated instability and misery, divided the countries of Europe, also achieving nothing worth achieving. There is not one part of the vast sphere America has arrogantly viewed as its area of influence that has not been made worse by Bush-Obama policies.

Mass killing, mass destruction of old societies and cities, induced-coups, threats, fears, torture, the creation of huge and desperate human movements, promotion and reward of terror as a covert policy tool, the decline everywhere in the rule of law, extra-judicial killing on an organized scale, a huge erosion in respect for international institutions like the now much-debased UN, an endless and confusing patchwork of lies told about terrible events – all while ignoring genuinely terrible situations like those in Palestine or in Saudi Arabia or in Turkey.

Apart from the horrors Merkel has implicitly or explicitly embraced and apart from the anger and disruptions and economic hardship her embrace has meant for Europe – America’s arbitrary and unwarranted sanctions against Russia have cost the German and French economies literally billions which America smilingly allows them to pay – one look at a map of Europe tells you just part of the reason why her views are so utterly counter-productive.

For scores of reasons, the future of Europe is in a cooperative and close relationship with Russia. It just cannot be otherwise, although, if you are determined to waste enough resources, impoverishing to some degree your own people through decreased trade and increased military waste, you can hold the inevitable off for quite a while. Look at America’s ten years of sheer insanity in Vietnam if you doubt for a moment that it is possible for a great country to do absolutely pointless and insanely costly things. Well, another insane and costly crusade is exactly the course America has been on in recent years, and leaders like Merkel have served as the most willing helpers in the task.

Obama and his political associate, Hillary Clinton, are total failures as figures of principle and as leaders, and Merkel very much resembles them, even down to the pathetic recent appeal she is using with German voters in anticipation of 2017 elections. She has imported wholesale Hillary’s squalid, 1950s-style claim that Russia threatens the integrity of elections, her empty claims being just an effort to stoke-up fears to get what she wants.

And then there are the remarkably empty and pretentious words she wrote in her official letter to President-elect Trump:

“Germany and America are united by shared values: through democracy, freedom, respect for the right and dignity of every individual, irrespective of origin, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation or political attitude. On the basis of these values, I would like to offer you a close cooperation between the governments of our countries.”

No clear-thinking person can accept such words as anything but hypocritical establishment claptrap – the kind of phony stuff just rejected by the American people. There is not a sincere phrase contained in the paragraph, just an arrogant assumption of moral loftiness and a presumption of setting standards for future relations. Can any thoughtful reader not sense almost an insult in the words? Insufferable stuff coming, as it does, from someone who never lifted a finger, except to assist, in the killing of tens of thousands of women and their families in half a dozen lands.

IMF chief Christine Lagarde will NOT be axed despite criminal negligence conviction as she rules out appealing French court's verdict

Christine Lagarde, 60, was convicted yesterday of negligence over 2008 case The International Monetary Fund's board has given her a vote of confidence She thanked them for their support and said she was willing to 'turn the page'

Christine Lagarde will remain head of the International Monetary Fund despite being convicted of negligence in relation to her time as France's finance minister.

The International Monetary Fund's executive board said last night it had 'full confidence' in Lagarde's ability to carry out her duties at the head of the Washington-based international lending agency.

France's Court of Justice of the Republic yesterday found Lagarde guilty of one count of negligence but spared her jail and even a criminal record.

The 60-year-old IMF leader had potentially faced a year in jail and a fine for not seeking to block a fraudulent 2008 arbitration award to politically connected tycoon, Bernard Tapie, when she was finance minister.

'You CAN'T leave!' EU threatens France and Italy with MAMMOTH bill if they quit the euroBRUSSELS has threatened Italy with an almost certainly unpayable bill if the country's citizens take the democratic decision to quit the troubled euro.

EU chiefs said countries looking to axe the unpopular single currency will have to pay back all their debts in one go before they can leave, making such a move massively unaffordable.

The pronouncement comes after prominent politicians in a number of member states including Italy, France, Greece and the Netherlands have all made noises about ditching the euro.

A man has been wounded after a French soldier opened fire on him. The man was evidently trying to enter the Louvre with a suitcase..

----- The Louvre museum in Paris has been cordoned off after a French soldier opened fire on an attacker, wounding him, local media report. The attacker armed with a knife reportedly cried out “Allahu Akbar.”

The French Interior Ministry reported that there has been a “grave public security incident” in the vicinity of the Louvre museum. The area has been sealed off.

Fake news and counterfeit candidates: are Brussels and the CIA behind the French presidential front-runner?

Emmanuel Macron’s Presidential candidacy – and his new Party En Marche! – represent what appears to be a revolution in French politics. But all may not be as it seems: to some, it looks like superficial marketing; to others, it begs the question, “Who’s funding all this?”

'This is a political assassination': Francois Fillon refuses to quit French presidential race following fraud scandal police raid as his British wife 'is quizzed by police'

Francois Fillon was widely tipped to stand after cancelling a public appearance He confirmed that his lawyers received a summons from judges today The former prime minister is accused of paying Penelope hundreds of thousands of pounds while pretending she was his ‘parliamentary assistant’ At a press conference he vowed to fight on, branding it a 'political assassination'

An EU parliamentary committee has voted to lift the immunity of French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, officials have said. The decision is over the graphic photos of Islamic State victims posted by the politician on Twitter.

Le Pen, the leader of the Eurosceptic and anti-immigration National Front and contender for the French presidency in the upcoming elections, is under investigation in France for posting images of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) atrocities, including the beheading of American journalist James Foley, back in 2015.

The European Parliament as a whole is to vote on the issue on Thursday, AFP reported.

RT sought comment from Ludovic de Danne, the Secretary General of the ENF (Europe of Nations and Freedom), the political bloc in the European parliament led by Le Pen.

“It's a poor way of the EU globalists and an easy hypocritical excuse to target Marine Le Pen,” de Danne responded in an email. “Like for the other attacks it’s the same maneuvers like against Brexit and Trump. The people are not blind anymore.”

Chaos at Brexit summit as Poland VETOES Merkel masterplan causing BLAZING ROW with FranceA KEY European summit on how the bloc will proceed after Brexit descended into farce this evening as Poland vowed to veto the idea of a “two-speed” Europe backed by the most powerful member states.

What was meant to be a closely choreographed display of unity instead took on an increasingly chaotic air as Warsaw filled what has traditionally been Britain’s role as the black sheep of the European family.

In a bombshell ultimatum the country’s prime minister said she would block any attempts to move the project forward by allowing some member states to integrate at a faster pace than others.

Things then reportedly took an ugly turn at dinner as the move led to a blazing row erupting between Poland and France ,,,